Hello and with me this week we have spiked columnist Ella Wielin

Hi and a returning special guest male-plus columnist Charlie Peters

Hey forza coming up on the show the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the end of COVID restrictions and trans women in women's sports.

So this has been incredibly serious week for the Ukraine crisis.

Vladimir Putin has officially declared war.

He's been invading Ukraine from all size. This is an enormous escalation.

I mean just to recap a little bit, we started the week with a crazed speech from Putin

where he essentially denied that Ukraine was a proper country.

He then recognized the independence of two of the breakaway regions in the Don Bass.

Then he sent troops into those regions and now things have gone even further to a full on

invasion well beyond those disputed territories. Ella what have you made of this escalation?

I think it's really important to say that it has taken people by surprise

and I know that in previous podcasts we were talking about the fact that Western media had

you know rolling coverage of Ky Kiev and was kind of putting dates and times to when it was

supposed to happen and I think the flippancy around that shows that people weren't

prepared for this unprecedented move by well I mean, maybe you could quibble

the word unprecedented, but certainly a surprising move by Putin because it is so extreme.

And it does feel like in the last week he has

it's catalyzed and also he's reacted to I think a growing tension or you could argue that I think he's been put into a kind of a dangerous corner and instead of going

down the route of diplomacy instead of being reasonable he is denied the sovereignty of Ukraine. He's destroyed the

concept of its borders. He's now killing its people. There have been fatalities. He's bombing places in Kiev military positions and things like this is looking really grim.

And rather than this being something that has any kind of clear cut answer to it. I think Putin is very

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